Partners [Path Unlocked 🔓]

Chapter 30 - It Only Goes Downhill

The memories kept coming without pause, bombarding the android's system without allowing a moment to process any of them past their initial footage itself: An abandoned freighter in the Ferndale district. The word Jericho printed across a rusted hunk of metal. The deviant's hideout.

Hank pulled out of the stream the moment he had the information he sought, stumbling back a pace and reaching a blind hand out to grasp the edge of the desk for support, his processors whirling and his equilibrium calibrator on the fritz in the face of such an onslaught of data. The information overload began to subdue in a few half-seconds, the HK800's design allowing for large doses of information to be input at once and quickly compensating for the momentary short out. The machine reopened his eyes to the world around him soon after, releasing the edge of the desk and straightening his tie as he moved to stand tall once more, systems all coming back online and bringing him positive results across the board as his software ran a quick self-scan.

Sick. The self- scan also declared befuddlingly. You feel sick. Hank was certain that was implausible but he felt the truth of the reading all the same, his biocomponents misfiring like wildfire without tangible cause and warnings flaring up in his visual field to block out most of the room around him.

When the android finally swiped enough of the glaring messages away to see once more, the only person left standing in the room with the android was Elijah Kamski, glancing down at Chloe's body with a thoughtful expression and twirling something between his fingers. The broken machine his gaze was fixed upon lay in a puddle of thirium by that point, the vibrant blue substance leaking steadily from the hole in the center of her skull to run down her artificial skin and matt her synthetic hair, eventually coming to stain the floor below in a steadily spreading pool that stretched further out with each passing moment. Her eyes were wide but glassy and her lips remained parted even in deactivation, forever holding on to that lost sound they failed to let go of before the trigger was pulled. Chloe's LED was off, no light of life shining forth from her temple and leaving nothing but a flat gray in its wake.

Sick. Hank's systems declared again as he laid eyes on the man. He makes you sick. A piece of data simply stated like a fact. It was a fact. It was also a fact that an impossible preconstruction of slamming his fist straight into the man's mouth flashed through the android's vision and he twitched forward a step before a bright red wall stopped him in his tracks, forcing his mechanical muscles into grinding stillness even as the HK800 found himself straining against it.

What the fuck did you do to Connor... Screamed silently just on the tip of the machine's tongue but he bit it back. Had to bite it back. 

"So I suppose you show no signs of deviancy." Elijah commented observationally, his gaze still fixed calculatingly on the deactivated RT600 as he tossed the thing he was playing with up and caught it back in his hand as it fell, metallic glint catching the pale light of the office as he did so.

What the ever loving fuck did you do to Connor?? Fought to be heard, ever mechanical fiber of his being straining with he effort to keep his teeth groud down around the words.

"I am specifically designed to resist..." Hank began instead but lost his words as he watched the thing Kamski toyed with pass from hand to hand, tossed lightly between his fingers and snatched from the air with each turn.

Likely prompted by the incomplete answer, the club owner brought his eyes up from the decommissioned machine left lying on the floor to the prototype standing across from him, though his gaze was not so much questioning as it was expectant, as if the man were waiting for something. Kamski spun the item around his finger slowly, watching the machine's gaze follow it and letting his lips curl into a small smirk before snagging it into a tight fist, hiding it from view.